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I'm inclined to stick with branding so all one word. However, what would affect this decision is search data. Go into search console or connect search console to analytics. Look in the search terms panel. Are people typing it as one word or separate words. Often it's best to display what people expect to see. That improves CTR

Hello yacpro, I would recommend providing a link directly to the top-level "Jackets" category for users. Maybe I don't know what type of jacket I want to buy? As for search engines, that's probably too competitive of a short-tail phrase to compete on, but at least the page will provide direct access for spiders (and users) to get to all jacket categories.

Thanks  for the input! The move to https sitewide will be added to our re-platforming plan.

You are quite welcome.

Yes you want to have it match the canonical tag so most effective method is to 301 redirect so they match the canonical tag site map and robots.txt etc.  You can use a Regex code like this at the end of the URL /?$ in the case of category URLs it will allow them when needed. if you use the proper 301 you will not have to deal with the category issue anyway. rel="canonical" href="https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-on-url-trailing-slash" /> I hope this is able to shed more light on the issue and great answer Eric. Hope I was of help, Tom

Great follow up!  Thanks for that. :^)

Thanks for the info. In my books a 301 redirect is for a direct replacement of an old webpage for a new one. I knew a bunch of 404 errors would be problematic, but I was also worried setting up 301 redirects to the home page (which is not a replacement for the product page being removed) would not agree with best practices. Also good point regarding existing incoming links pointing to the pages being removed. I think what we'll do is export URLs from the Google index, and either set a 301 redirect to the new product page (if it exists) or if not we'll 301 redirect to that product's category page.

Hello Travis, I'm on the same page as you - I just wanted a third party's opinion. Thank you!

Thanks guys. This is the answer I was hoping for.

So glad I could help get this figured out! Sometimes it just takes another set of eyes. -Chiaryn

Thanks. I think I will monitor for the next 2-3 weeks, and if there still is a lot of unwanted URLS with parameters in the index, I will start requesting removals.

Just to bring closure to this thread, I never found an answer for this and simply ended up using the common syntax for 301 redirects in htaccess. Redirect 301 /oldpage.html http://www.yoursite.com/newpage.html

I'm going to look into our canonical tags first - I think this is the best place to start. Once this is done, I'll wait a week and see if the next scan yields fewer errors. I'll keep you posted. Thanks.

Hi yacpro13, There have been questions on a similar note in the Q&A before if you have a look here and here. Basically the long and short of things is that yes, they are two completely different terms. There is evidence that adding a plural to something for example actually implies changes in what the searcher was looking for and therefore it's arguably appropriate that different content appear. While this is a huge pain, you want to make sure that you are targeting a term that you think is appropriate. Out of the tea cup, teacups and teacup, which one of these has the current SERP that is around what you're looking for? Have a think about what people would search for and focus on the big SERPs, not the little ones on the side.

Great - thanks for the info guys!

Most likely. Unless the parameters are greatly changing the content on the page, rather than simply sorting, you will want to block them or just use a canonical tag.